Francis Ford Coppola first thought of making Tucker as a dark Brechtian musical back in the 70s and went so far as to have Leonard Bernstein think about the music. When he actually made the film in 1987, Joe Jackson provided the hopped-up big band licks and gave Mr. Coppola his best score since Rumblefish. No matter -- it's as much a director's biography in hidden form as ever there was, Fellini, Bergman, and Woody Allen notwithstanding. Mr. Coppola is the visionary who tried to buck the system and almost succeeded only to be brought down by forces, real and imagined, that control the way things run. Preston Tucker had a rocket ship of a car with turnable headlights and seat belts; Mr. Coppola had great movies about wiretappers, the nightmare of war, and a silly bit of off-beat stuff about lovers in Vegas. The specific points of such a parallel biography need not be driven into the ground here -- suffice it to say that one can imagine a young Francis telling his younger, equally visionary associate and design nut George Lucas (executive producing here) to grow a beard -- just as Jeff Bridges, in a career-highlight performance, tells his engineer played by Elias Koteas. Lovely Joan Allen plays Tucker's devoted, whip-smart wife -- an Eleanor substitute -- and Christian Slater is Tucker's eldest son, perhaps a stand-in for Coppola's son, Gio, who died before the film was made and to whom it is dedicated. Brash, fun, funny, melodramatic -- a visual feast that plays on 40s and 50s conventions -- Tucker: the Man and His Dream couldn't be a better collaboration between visionaries: Coppola, Lucas, and Preston Tucker.